Tags for this video have been changed from 'Asner, Konopacki, Glass, 2008, financial crisis' to 'Asner, Konopacki, Glass, 2008, financial crisis, California Teachers Union' - edited by Trancecoach

This is only "good" progress for a 2nd-world nation. Obama can't run on his record.

The American people (those who vote anyway) aren't buying that this is the best that can be done.

President Mitt will succeed or fail based on how closely he adheres to conservative fiscal principles.

As for govt. spending, don't worry, it's always increasing.



>> ^bareboards2:

And progress has been made. Thanks for reminding us all of just how smart and aware President Obama is.
If Obama loses, all I can hope for is that Moderate Mitt shows up. Because if we get Tea Party Brown Noser Mitt, we are headed for an economic disaster. Mitt is fond of saying we are currently headed in the direction of Greece. If we go all Tea Party, we will head in the direction of Spain.
Moderate economic action based on economic facts is what will save us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/opinion/krugman-the
-secret-of-our-non-success.html?_r=0
Take a moment to read about economic research. An excerpt:
The U.S. economy finally seems to be recovering in earnest, with housing on the rebound and job creation outpacing growth in the working-age population. But the news is good, not great — it will still take years to restore full employment — and it has been a very long time coming. Why has the slump been so protracted?
The answer — backed by overwhelming evidence — is that this is what normally happens after a severe financial crisis. But Mitt Romney’s economic team rejects that evidence. And this denialism bodes ill for policy if Mr. Romney wins next month.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Back in February 2009, President Obama told Today Show host Matt Lauer that he’d be a one-term president if he didn’t fix the economy in three years.
“I will be held accountable,” Obama said. “I’ve got four years and … A year from now, I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there … If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

And progress has been made. Thanks for reminding us all of just how smart and aware President Obama is.

If Obama loses, all I can hope for is that Moderate Mitt shows up. Because if we get Tea Party Brown Noser Mitt, we are headed for an economic disaster. Mitt is fond of saying we are currently headed in the direction of Greece. If we go all Tea Party, we will head in the direction of Spain.

Moderate economic action based on economic facts is what will save us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/opinion/krugman-the-secret-of-our-non-success.html?_r=0

Take a moment to read about economic research. An excerpt:

The U.S. economy finally seems to be recovering in earnest, with housing on the rebound and job creation outpacing growth in the working-age population. But the news is good, not great — it will still take years to restore full employment — and it has been a very long time coming. Why has the slump been so protracted?

The answer — backed by overwhelming evidence — is that this is what normally happens after a severe financial crisis. But Mitt Romney’s economic team rejects that evidence. And this denialism bodes ill for policy if Mr. Romney wins next month.


>> ^quantumushroom:

Back in February 2009, President Obama told Today Show host Matt Lauer that he’d be a one-term president if he didn’t fix the economy in three years.
“I will be held accountable,” Obama said. “I’ve got four years and … A year from now, I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there … If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

My cards on the table: I think Obama is a horrible leader, one of the worst I've ever seen in elected office. I thought he had great vision before, and I liked his early actions in the Middle East, but he seems to lack the balls to do anything decisive. Even if he made strong decisions that I disagreed with I'd respect him more than I do. On that count, Bush was better.

>>> You think Obama failed because he wasn't liberal enough, is that correct? I saw no vision, just a clever media-protected imago who freely admitted he acted as a mirror or canvas for everyone to project their ideas onto him. Middle East failures are no surprise. He's an appeaser, his offered olive branch to the turbaned vermin was predictably shoved up his you-know-where.

What good would the Keystone Pipeline do the US? All it does is remove oil from the States to sell abroad. How could this possibly be a good thing?

>>> It would do more good than fake solar companies. Special thanks to the current idiot Energy Secretary for admitting out loud what the rest of us already knew.

Assuming "scamulous" means "stimulus", then yes, of course it failed. Nothing would have succeeded.

>>> Where were you with this warning before the scamulus began (and yes, Bush conceived it but Obama supercharged it).

And if he hadn't given a stimulus package, the Republicans would have jumped down his throat for doing nothing.

>>> Back to leadership: a real leader can take it. FDR's scamulus was also a failure and revisionist history hides its lack of effectiveness, but at least FDR said of his enemies, "I welcome their hatred."

But per your last comment, "the guy in charge at the time the fit hits the shan gets the blame", so you accept then that the entire worldwide financial crisis is Bush's fault anyway. Deal.

It's a tad more complicated than that. Bush Hatred was a daily staple of the libmedia diet and people were naturally disenchanted with negative-only libmedia reporting on the wars. I'm not sure if Bush got the lion's share of the blame for the Follies of '08...he does deserve blame for the initial scamuli, as well as acting like a liberal with a few conservative tendencies.

The seeds of the banking crisis were sowed by government ineptitude and corruption. Few people take huge risks with their own money, so when a socialist government funds a "Free Houses for Poor People Who Can't Afford Them Act" program and promises banks "risk-free" support of loans and investments to do so, people act accordingly.

Europe has European socialism to blame for its follies. Someone's gotta pay for all that free honey, and when there are more freeloaders than worker bees the hive collapses.

May the majority of bewildered voters not be so readily fooled this year, even if it means electing a stiff like Romney. Welcome back stability after His Earness and his planned chaos. And Barney Frank belongs in an orange jumpsuit for his role in the financial crises.












>> ^messenger:

My cards on the table: I think Obama is a horrible leader, one of the worst I've ever seen in elected office. I thought he had great vision before, and I liked his early actions in the Middle East, but he seems to lack the balls to do anything decisive. Even if he made strong decisions that I disagreed with I'd respect him more than I do. On that count, Bush was better.
What good would the Keystone Pipeline do the US? All it does is remove oil from the States to sell abroad. How could this possibly be a good thing?
Assuming "scamulous" means "stimulus", then yes, of course it failed. Nothing would have succeeded. And if he hadn't given a stimulus package, the Republicans would have jumped down his throat for doing nothing. But per your last comment, "the guy in charge at the time the fit hits the shan gets the blame", so you accept then that the entire worldwide financial crisis is Bush's fault anyway. Deal.

My cards on the table: I think Obama is a horrible leader, one of the worst I've ever seen in elected office. I thought he had great vision before, and I liked his early actions in the Middle East, but he seems to lack the balls to do anything decisive. Even if he made strong decisions that I disagreed with I'd respect him more than I do. On that count, Bush was better.

What good would the Keystone Pipeline do the US? All it does is remove oil from the States to sell abroad. How could this possibly be a good thing?

Assuming "scamulous" means "stimulus", then yes, of course it failed. Nothing would have succeeded. And if he hadn't given a stimulus package, the Republicans would have jumped down his throat for doing nothing. But per your last comment, "the guy in charge at the time the fit hits the shan gets the blame", so you accept then that the entire worldwide financial crisis is Bush's fault anyway. Deal.>> ^quantumushroom:

Pretending or denying Obama's lack of experience and leadership hasn't negatively affected the US economy is as intellectually dishonest as it gets.
Oil prices are not controlled by your government.
Where were statements like this when Bush was being blamed for high gas prices? Nowhere.
Oil prices are affected by the federal leviathan's antics every day. Gasoline is taxed by the government, and although it shouldn't be deciding which industries thrive and which fail, here we have the Amateur and his merry crew losing billions of taxpayer dollars to bullsh1t green solar companies while vetoing the Keystone Pipeline.
Our enemies know His Earness is spineless. You think iran would be playing these games with a real leader in the White House? Or are you going to state that iran doesn't directly control oil prices so it "doesn't count".
And oh yes, what about the scamulus? FAIL.
Whether "fair" or not, the guy in charge at the time the fit hits the shan gets the blame. Deal.
>> ^messenger:
How the uneducated make arguments:
1. Pick a random problem in your life.
2. Say your chosen target did it.
3. Repeat until it gains traction.
Oil prices are not controlled by your government.>> ^quantumushroom:
Are you enjoying the higher gas prices?

People also forget that it wasn't just people who work for GM and Chrysler whose jobs were saved. There's a whole supply chain to think about. Ohio's job market was helped out a lot by the auto bailout because we have a lot of companies who supply parts to GM and Chrysler here.

And of course those effects just keep rippling out, because people who kept their job at the parts supplier also spend their paycheck in the local economy. They buy houses here, eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores, etc.

People seem to have this notion that economic growth is all about profits, but really, it has more to do with making sure money keeps turning over in the economy. You want people to spend money on things, so people selling things have money to hire people to make more things, which gives those people money they can use to spend on things. You want money to flow in a circle, so everyone's kept employed making more stuff which over time makes us more prosperous.

Something like the liquidation of Chrysler or GM would've been a major disruption to that flow, right at a time when the financial crisis was creating a giant disruption of its own.

The bailouts prevented those disruptions, and the amount of money it saved us versus the alternative is much, much greater than the costs of lending the money to GM and Chrysler would be, even if we never got a dime back from either one.

Obama: "Occupy Wall Street" reflects "broad-based frustration"

President Obama on Thursday called the "Occupy Wall Street" protests a reflection of a "broad-based frustration about how our financial system works" and pledged to continue fighting to protect American consumers.

The president, speaking at a press conference, said he had heard about and seen television reports on the recent protests on Wall Street, and noted that "I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel."

"We had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression - huge collateral damage throughout the country, all across main street. And yet, you are still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to crack down on abusive practices that got us in the situation in the first place," Mr. Obama told reporters. "I think people are frustrated.">> ^shagen454:

They are all bad. Democrap or Retardican. Its all the same shit bought by different... or the same, corporate greed. Obama has hardly even acknowledged Occupy and ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE. You voted for the change marketing strategy but you let corporate greed buy into even more Bushesque policy by believing that voting makes a difference. He doesnt want to publicize Occupy by even referring to it because he knows and the powers that be know that people are beginning to take note that it is all bullshit, its broken, its an illusion and it all fundamentally needs to be rebuilt... utilizing the constitution.
Instead of voting you should fucking protest a system that doesn't work on voting day!!!! Whether it is Romney, Paul or Obama its nearly the same shit. They strip you of liberties and steal from your coffers, deregulation for the corporate state, more police state, privatizing everything under the sun, raising the prices and gauging everyone who does not have a million dollars. Stop perpetuating the illusion.

Don’t Blame Capitalism for Wall Street’s Corruption and Lawlessness:

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilization, he answered:

I think it would be a good idea.

I feel the same way about free market capitalism.

It would be a good idea, but it is not what we have now. Instead, we have either socialism, fascism or a type of looting.

If people want to criticize capitalism and propose an alternative, that is fine . . . but only if they understand what free market capitalism is and acknowledge that America has not practiced free market capitalism for some time.

...

People pointing to the Western economies and saying that capitalism doesn’t work is as incorrect as pointing to Stalin’s murder of millions of innocent people and blaming it on socialism. Without the government’s creation of the too big to fail banks, Fed’s intervention in interest rates and the markets, government-created moral hazard emboldening casino-style speculation, corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model of bribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn’t have gotten nearly as bad.

I linked these on the raw video of this, but I may as well add them to Thom's argument as well:

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/bloombergs-awful-comment-what-can-we-say-for-certain-regarding-the-gses/

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-caused-the-financial-crisis-the-big-lie-goes-viral/2011/10/31/gIQAXlSOqM_story.html?sub=AR

*debunked

And I know all three of these were sparked by Michael Bloomberg, but here's three different awesome takedowns of the "government created the crisis" bullshit:

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/bloombergs-awful-comment-what-can-we-say-for-certain-regarding-the-gses/

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-caused-the-financial-crisis-the-big-lie-goes-viral/2011/10/31/gIQAXlSOqM_story.html?sub=AR

Feel free to deploy any or all of them on anyone who ever says that to you.

A. We have been running counter-cyclical deficits. You can say what you want about the "shell game", which I btw don't agree with as a characterization, in the mid to late 90's, but compare that to the deficits run post 9/11. There's a marked difference. Compare George W. Bush deficits of the mid 2000's to what Obama has done. When the economy tanked, deficits grew, not stayed the same or shrunk.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/us_deficit_100.png

I completely agree with you we have failed to run surpluses when the economy has been prospering. That is absolutely the case, but you definitely see swelling of deficits in response to recessions in the chart above. That's a Keynesian idea, even if it is shared with the monetarists.

B. Yeah, I'm sure. Granted, LOL @ Ballmer from time to time.

D. Individuals may be skeptical of the FDIC right now, but we're speaking of the influence systemically of the FDIC. This past financial crisis was all about a credit crisis. Part of why the recession occurred occurred was an eroding of available credit due to pervasive fear and mistrust, a lot among banking institutions of each other. The last thing we needed was a run on the banks, and that was very largely avoided. The FDIC was a huge reason for that. Had there been, more banks would have gone under, and banks still surviving would have been even more irrationally tight on lending. That would have been absolutely disastrous. There's little doubt in my mind we would have seen 20% unemployment.

>> ^bmacs27:

A. Lol at counter-cyclic budget deficits. I know they played that whole shell game with social security in the 90s, but other than that, I don't think we've really been running many counter-cyclic Keynesian surpluses. The other thing to remember is that monetarism is a derivative of Keynesian theory, so it isn't surprising that they have some overlapping prescriptions. I guess I would push my argument further by stating that Greenspan is broadly considered a monetarist, and he pretty much ran the economy over that interval. Teh maestro.
B. Heh, you sure about that? "I LOVE this COMPANY!!!!!!!"
C. I think we pretty much agree here without getting to wonkish.
D. My GF is in ING. It's now capital one, so she's likely leaving it. Pretty much I wish your average bank was much smaller than they are today. Also, I wouldn't be so confident in that FDIC insurance. The FDIC itself is in some dire straights. Also, they just moved all that bad Merrill paper into FDIC insured subsidiaries of BoA so that they could borrow against the deposits at better short term rates to support it.

Nonetheless, Congress repealed the law and the nation suffered the tragic consequences of the 2008 financial crisis about a decade later.

It may be implied that the repeal of Glass-Steven Seagal led to the 2008 crisis but evidence is scant.

"The legislation was signed into law by President Clinton on November 12, 1999. Clinton's support of the repeal is revealed in the following statement by a Goldman Sachs partner Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary"

“The banking industry is fundamentally different from what it was two decades ago, let alone in 1933.” He said the industry has been transformed into a global business of facilitating capital formation through diverse new products, services and markets. “U.S. banks generally engage in a broader range of securities activities abroad than is permitted domestically,” said the Treasury secretary. “Even domestically, the separation of investment banking and commercial banking envisioned by Glass-Steagall has eroded significantly.”

And in his own statement upon CLINTON signing the act into law:

"“Over the past seven years we have tried to modernize the economy. And today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority.”

"So he's more of a talker than a trader. A man who doesn't own the house he lives in, but can sum up the financial crisis in just three minutes – a knack that escapes many financial commentators."

>> ^blankfist:

[W]hat's Obama's position on US Imperialism?

He's against it.

>> ^blankfist:
Is he going to finally end the wars?

He's always said he would. He just put out a budget that counts the savings from him doing so. Over 100,000 troops have been withdrawn from Iraq, with the remainder due out by the end of the year, and troops are now starting to withdraw from Afghanistan.

>> ^blankfist:
What about Guantanamo Bay?

He gave an executive order ordering it closed. But Congress blocked him. If you cared enough about this topic to read up on it, or even one of the many times I've explained the problem, you'd know this one can't be fixed by Presidential wand-waving.

>> ^blankfist:
Or more importantly what about the 700+ bases in over 130 countries overseas? Is he closing those down?

If they're not actively fighting anyone, I'm not too worried about it. I'd like to see us reduce our military presence around the world, but I figure reducing the military's budget overall is all that's really required, and Obama and Democrats generally are on board for that.

>> ^blankfist:
What about the billions the federal government gives in corporate welfare? Is he getting rid of that?

That's congress's bag, but yes. That's literally in the budget proposal Cafferty, the Washington Times, and you yourself are decrying, and counting as eeeeevil "tax increases". Obama's proposal includes a $200 billion dollar cut to farm subsidies, and the elimination of gas & oil subsidies, plus the elimination a large number of smaller-ticket subsidies and tax exemptions.

>> ^blankfist:
Until he does those things, I'm getting tired of hearing your side chanting his praises and raising taxes and whatever other nonsense you like to spout.

But that's the thing, he would do all of those things, but Republicans block him using every trick in the book. Plus, ever since 2010 they've held the House, and won't let any of what you claim to want passed even come to the floor.

>> ^blankfist:
You're the party of war now. Enjoy it, but don't expect me to tag along for the ride into the dirt.


But you are tagging along for the ride into the dirt. You're still living in the US, and you're still parroting right-wing talking points all over the place. You carry water for the Republicans, and then pretend like saying "I'm a libertarian who opposes war" absolves you of all responsibility for generally helping the real "party of War" into power.

And rather than face up to the reality of what you're doing, you cook up these absurd justifications that fly entirely in the face of reality, like "liberals want more wars".

Your link is pointless.
Each person in the world practices Capitalism each and every day. So why do you dog it so much?

Your link is about the various causes of homeless.
The lack of Affordable housing is not the fault of capitalism. Capitalism does not raise costs but reduces costs through competition. Government rules and regulations add costs. Go blame them.

Another on that list is "Government policy - Child support enforcement keeping drivers licenses from citizens and other civil rights violations." Once again Government messing with people from enjoying their freedom which costs them more money. Go fight the government, not Capitalism.

Lastly another item on you list is low wages. Low wage is not meant to live on but a stepping stone as one advances in their career. The only people who live on low wages are those who decided not to pay attention in school and got left behind. That's their fault. If they really want a better wage then they will make the necessary adjustments and turn themselves around towards the part of prosperity.

Granted some are born with low IQ or such and would not ever be much more than a burger flipper. That is sad and the local community should be the helping hand in times of need, not Government.


>> ^Peroxide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States

>> ^bobknight33:
Capitalism it the best. It serves all people equally.